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09-14-2021, 07:01 PM
https://wehoville.com/2021/09/13/45-years-of-charlies-angels-fandom-began-with-this-weho-man/
Monday - September 13, 2021 by Brandon Garcia | 3 Comments
As the Charlie’s Angels TV series celebrates its 45th Anniversary on Sept. 22, West Hollywood resident Mike Pingel will mark his own contribution to the series’ continued history with the release of his new book, Angelic Heaven: 25 Years of Charlie’s Angels News, which takes a look at how Pingel created the “Angelic Heaven” newsletter and CharliesAngels.com, and how Pingel’s passion for “Charlie’s Angels” turned into 25 years of Angelic news for fans round the world.
The book will also contain the first 4 years of the printed newsletter, fans memories of the series, the newsletters’ achievements and legal battle over the CharliesAngels.com domain.
Pingel created the “Angelic Heaven” newsletter on August 1995 and premiered CharliesAngels.com on the Internet in October 1996. The website was quickly picked as site of the day by both Yahoo.com and WebTV. Since then, the site has been updating fans on the current works of the actresses and everything Charlie’s Angels. The Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/charliesangelstv has now over 18K followers.
Pingel has one of the largest Charlie’s Angels memorabilia collections in the world, including rare items such as as the original Harry’s Angels script, a Charlie’s Angels pinball machine, Cheryl Ladd’s character Kris Munroe business card, one of the Jill’s car license plates and Farrah’s sunglasses. Pingel has penned two books about the series and is releasing a third
When did you first hear about Charlie’s Angels?
When I first heard about Charlie’s Angels I was about eight years old and it was 1977. That’s when I started I fell in love like the whole world was falling in love with Charlie’s Angels in 1976 when Farrah, Kate and Jacqueline hit the airwaves with their first movie, with the first pilot movie and then it became a TV show on September 21st, 1976. There’s a pilot of the show which is a little different from the series. In the pilot, they were actually detectives. They go undercover. They don’t use guns in the original pilot. There’s two people in the office, there’s Woodward and Bosley. Then of course there’s Charlie and the three Angels. So that was how the original pilot was. It was an hour and like 20 minutes. The pilot did just so well when it aired in 1976 that in March of 1976, abc was like “we need to put this on the schedule.” It got about 52 I think it was 52 ratings which was at that point only like super bowls were getting, so it got a huge rating. There was really no fanfare for the pilot that came out in March and literally it was through the roof. And no one really thought it was going to do anything.
What was it that was so enrapturing about the show?
It was just casting the three Angels. I mean just the chemistry of the three girls. It was something that had not been seen before on TV. Really, three women in lead roles. We had Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman but those were kind of like fantasy people. These are really someone that could actually be your neighbor. They’re real. They were doing men’s jobs. They were detectives and going undercover and capturing the bad guy themselves with like zero help from a male counterpart. They did have Bosley which was more like a comic relief. He did help out a little bit but he was more in the background. So we had three women who were just the chemistry was amazing and they’re breathtaking. I mean the angels were breathtaking. Farrah was gorgeous, Jacqueline was gorgeous, Kate was gorgeous, and they were all different.
Who was your favorite Angel?
My favorite was Cheryl Ladd. When she came in on the second season she played Chris Monroe, she was Joe’s little sister. Cheryl is and always will be my favorite Angel.
Has the public perception of the show changed over time?
I don’t think it really has changed much because basically they were strong women, they were girl power, they were kicking ass. They are definitely one of the mainstream female heroines on television. I mean it’s hard, people kept trying to redo the series and trying to recreate the series, and I think it was really the chemistry, just the lightning in the bottle that can never be redone. It’s like the TV show Friends, you can try to do Friends again but there’s no way you can do Friends again. I mean it’s just just an iconic show.
How do the films of the early 2000s and the most recent reboot fit into the Charlie’s Angels canon?
Well I think the first movie with Drew, Cameron and Lucy Liu did a really great job with paying homage to the original series and making a really good first film. I actually worked a little bit on the production in a tiny part of being a consultant. I also auditioned for the film which I obviously did not get. I was in the room with drew and leonard goldberg and looking at the pictures and mcgee was there and it was fun. They really wanted for the first film to get the essence of the series, to look back at what the angels actually did. And they did a couple of nice things in the movie like the “I’m not a yo-yo scene” and they did a lot of costume stuff that was very reminiscent of the original 1970 series. Of course then you flash forward to the second movie which they became way more like out of control jedi, more an action adventure like a computer game or something. They were jumping and kicking and doing all this other stuff and and Charlie’s Full Throttle was a little too full throttle. I believe then of course you go to the 2011 tv show which was horrific. They changed everybody, all the actors, all the angels were pretty much all criminals. It really reminded me of what Leonard Goldberg wanted to do originally with Charlie’s Angels was called the Alley Cats. It was like they’re all criminals and they were all like dark and leather and doing good but that all went wrong on the series. It only lasted eight episodes and then of course we can look at the Elizabeth Banks movie which just completely missed the boat. The movie made no money.
Why was that film such a misfire?
I think a lot of was there was like 14 Bosleys and it got all jumbled. What got me was he opening scene and there’s all these people doing karate fighting and then they just focus on the three Angels and I’m like who are these other people? And there’s like a variety of Angels everywhere and I’m like what is going on? And the characters are not even in a trio until the end of the movie. They’re fighting, they’re inciting, they’re kicking each other off the roof. The writing was horrific. There was so much, so many bad things about that movie.
How did you go from being a mere fan to being the pre-eminent Angels historian and curator?
Honestly way back in the 90s I started collecting Charlie’s memorabilia. I was a collector when I was a kid, I didn’t know what collecting was, I just collected everything. And some of that stuff was made to throw away, and some I lost. And then I went to a party here in los angeles and they had the charlie’s angels dolls and this was in 1996. It was probably even earlier than that, ‘94. And I was like “I want those,” and then I just started collecting stuff. And that’s when you would go to the toy shop. There was no internet. There was no ebay. So you got this thing called the phone book and you circle things, you call people on the phone in ohio and say “hey can I buy this” and send them a check and it was really a hunt of collecting.
How was it publishing a newsletter and running a fan website in the earliest days of the internet?
Charliesangels.com came as the cusp of the internet and it had just started but yeah with collecting, it was definitely the hunt, the trying to figure out things and calling people. People would get the toy shop to FedEx to them before it gets to anybody else. People were, like obsessed, I mean it was just like “I’m gonna get that Charlie’s Angels doll before you are” or the makeup sets or that Farrah Fawcett mug. It was a crazy time but with that I was like “okay well I want to know what’s happening with the Angels.” I want to know what’s happening with the actresses, things were still happening, they’re all working still and I was like what’s happening with them? Because there was no place to go to find out where things were and so I had found a kind of group of Charlie’s Angels fans and I was “so is there a newsletter or something I can subscribe to that I can find out what’s going on?” and they’re like no and I was like “well then I think maybe I should do that.” so that’s what I did, I sat down in 1995 and I wrote my first newsletter. It was a one page newsletter that went out. And then it became four pages, the four pages became a fanzine, and people around the world were cutting me twelve dollars for the stamps. The first ones were free and then I got into a fanzine. A bookstore which is no longer here in West Hollywood used to have it on their newsstand. Some of the Hollywood collectible places up in Hollywood had it and I just started sending it out. I mean it happened every month and we would find all the information, I let all the publishers know that I was doing it and publicists would write me and send me stuff in an email or and I would start getting boxes from lifetime movies and stuff like that. So whatever anybody was doing they were just sending it to me. And then ‘96 the website began and that just turned huge as soon pretty much like three months after we were on online. Yahoo picked us as the site of the day, and it blew the site off the website and media started calling me all the time. I was in all the newspapers and stuff, and it was crazy. It never stopped, it just kept going.
Was there a point where it just became overwhelming running the site and the newsletter?
I don’t think I ever felt like it was too big to handle. When yahoo.com turns into the site of the day, that was pretty amazing, because it blew me off my server and I had to deal with the server. we were down for like a day and a half, and we struck a deal that if they would put an ad up, I could get a bigger space on their servers. This is before even godaddy was around, this was a long time ago. And then the the biggest thing for me at that point was the media started coming knocking on my door and so I started doing interviews and newspapers. Then meeting Cheryl for the first time. She was the first Angel I met. And then getting to know all the actresses was even beyond my wildest dreams. Oh my God!
Were the Angels already aware of who you were when you met them?
Yes, because their agents had received the newsletter. Most of them had heard of me and seen me. There was another show I was on that they wanted my collectibles on and Jacqueline was there so I faded into their lives whether they wanted to or not. I’ve done PR for Tanya Roberts, I did websites for both Cheryl and Tanya and Farrah Fawcett. I was Farrah’s assistant for two years. I am dear friends with of course Johnny, who’s passed away, and Cheryl, and well of course I know Kate very well and and I know Jackson very well and yeah I always say I’m the luckiest man on the earth because I get to hang with angels.
What is Charlie’s Angels’ connection with West Hollywood?
Well first off, a couple things with me: I mean with Charlie’s Angels, the newsletter, and the website, I have been here in West Hollywood forever. I’ve been a West Hollywood resident for about 30 years and we published the newsletter at Charlie Chan’s when that was around, so that it was a locally published newsletter or fanzine here in West Hollywood, and of course the website’s still here because that’s where I live so I’m always working on it through here. As far as the fandom as in the gay culture, we love beautiful women and the gay culture is always fascinated with gorgeous and beautiful women, and Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe and all these iconic actors and actresses. And I think that a beautiful, butt-kicking strong woman is definitely what we are drawn to. I always say I never wanted to date them but I wanted to shop with them. And I have, by the way. With Tanya, we’ve gone to Macy’s in the Valley, we did a lot of Christmas shopping. Cheryl, Bloomingdale’s, I believe. And then of course Farrah, we hit all the Beverly Hills shops. I remember Cheryl took me out for lunch in the Valley for my birthday and it was just interesting because it was one of those places you go up and you get food at the counter and so we ordered and she paid and we’re just standing there chatting. As I’m looking around everyone — like I mean the whole place — everyone’s talking about her. No one came up to her or bothered her because it was over by Warner Bros. and everybody was in the business but everybody was chatting about her. I mean the same thing happened every time we went out. When I went out with Farrah, when we would go places — Jay Bernstein told me once “When Farrah arrives someplace, everybody wants to meet her, from the queen of whatever to the bus boy.” And that’s the same for all the Angels. Everybody remembers Charlie’s Angels and they love it and they all have their favorite Angel.
What does the future hold for the franchise?
Hopefully another movie but I don’t think that’s in the future as far as with the last film, but who knows, never say never. I just wish when they do a movie or a TV show they actually call me or somebody else from the original series to help them. I’m happy to come in and help because you need to remember the bible of where it comes from. You can change things but if you look at all the TV shows that have been remade, the ones who really kept with the bible of the series, the original have gone on, like Hawaii 5-0 is a good example. They did it very well. But when they brought out the Bionic Woman, it’s dark and shadowy, and I’m like, “That’s not what it’s about.” I mean if you’re going to do something like that, call it something else. Because people want nostalgia and they want to watch what they remember in some way. If you don’t keep with the bible it’s hard.
Tell us about the anniversary.
Charlie’s Angels turns 45 years old. This is celebrating the 45th anniversary this month. so I am doing a live chat with Cheryl Ladd on Sept. 21, on the 45th anniversary through charlieangells.com. We just announced that today, so we’re going to do a live chat talking about Charlie’s Angels, and I think we’re going to set one up with Jacqueline but that has not been finished yet. And the new book is out about the history of what I did and how it is, and it has all the old newsletters in it so people can look at the original newsletters and people have been really responding to it. People have really enjoyed seeing the background of the newsletter and the website just because I think it’s been so culturally significant. It’s just fun to look back and celebrate something that’s been going so long and is so ingrained in my world. I never never thought I’d be talking about Charlie’s Angels for this long.
Monday - September 13, 2021 by Brandon Garcia | 3 Comments
As the Charlie’s Angels TV series celebrates its 45th Anniversary on Sept. 22, West Hollywood resident Mike Pingel will mark his own contribution to the series’ continued history with the release of his new book, Angelic Heaven: 25 Years of Charlie’s Angels News, which takes a look at how Pingel created the “Angelic Heaven” newsletter and CharliesAngels.com, and how Pingel’s passion for “Charlie’s Angels” turned into 25 years of Angelic news for fans round the world.
The book will also contain the first 4 years of the printed newsletter, fans memories of the series, the newsletters’ achievements and legal battle over the CharliesAngels.com domain.
Pingel created the “Angelic Heaven” newsletter on August 1995 and premiered CharliesAngels.com on the Internet in October 1996. The website was quickly picked as site of the day by both Yahoo.com and WebTV. Since then, the site has been updating fans on the current works of the actresses and everything Charlie’s Angels. The Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/charliesangelstv has now over 18K followers.
Pingel has one of the largest Charlie’s Angels memorabilia collections in the world, including rare items such as as the original Harry’s Angels script, a Charlie’s Angels pinball machine, Cheryl Ladd’s character Kris Munroe business card, one of the Jill’s car license plates and Farrah’s sunglasses. Pingel has penned two books about the series and is releasing a third
When did you first hear about Charlie’s Angels?
When I first heard about Charlie’s Angels I was about eight years old and it was 1977. That’s when I started I fell in love like the whole world was falling in love with Charlie’s Angels in 1976 when Farrah, Kate and Jacqueline hit the airwaves with their first movie, with the first pilot movie and then it became a TV show on September 21st, 1976. There’s a pilot of the show which is a little different from the series. In the pilot, they were actually detectives. They go undercover. They don’t use guns in the original pilot. There’s two people in the office, there’s Woodward and Bosley. Then of course there’s Charlie and the three Angels. So that was how the original pilot was. It was an hour and like 20 minutes. The pilot did just so well when it aired in 1976 that in March of 1976, abc was like “we need to put this on the schedule.” It got about 52 I think it was 52 ratings which was at that point only like super bowls were getting, so it got a huge rating. There was really no fanfare for the pilot that came out in March and literally it was through the roof. And no one really thought it was going to do anything.
What was it that was so enrapturing about the show?
It was just casting the three Angels. I mean just the chemistry of the three girls. It was something that had not been seen before on TV. Really, three women in lead roles. We had Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman but those were kind of like fantasy people. These are really someone that could actually be your neighbor. They’re real. They were doing men’s jobs. They were detectives and going undercover and capturing the bad guy themselves with like zero help from a male counterpart. They did have Bosley which was more like a comic relief. He did help out a little bit but he was more in the background. So we had three women who were just the chemistry was amazing and they’re breathtaking. I mean the angels were breathtaking. Farrah was gorgeous, Jacqueline was gorgeous, Kate was gorgeous, and they were all different.
Who was your favorite Angel?
My favorite was Cheryl Ladd. When she came in on the second season she played Chris Monroe, she was Joe’s little sister. Cheryl is and always will be my favorite Angel.
Has the public perception of the show changed over time?
I don’t think it really has changed much because basically they were strong women, they were girl power, they were kicking ass. They are definitely one of the mainstream female heroines on television. I mean it’s hard, people kept trying to redo the series and trying to recreate the series, and I think it was really the chemistry, just the lightning in the bottle that can never be redone. It’s like the TV show Friends, you can try to do Friends again but there’s no way you can do Friends again. I mean it’s just just an iconic show.
How do the films of the early 2000s and the most recent reboot fit into the Charlie’s Angels canon?
Well I think the first movie with Drew, Cameron and Lucy Liu did a really great job with paying homage to the original series and making a really good first film. I actually worked a little bit on the production in a tiny part of being a consultant. I also auditioned for the film which I obviously did not get. I was in the room with drew and leonard goldberg and looking at the pictures and mcgee was there and it was fun. They really wanted for the first film to get the essence of the series, to look back at what the angels actually did. And they did a couple of nice things in the movie like the “I’m not a yo-yo scene” and they did a lot of costume stuff that was very reminiscent of the original 1970 series. Of course then you flash forward to the second movie which they became way more like out of control jedi, more an action adventure like a computer game or something. They were jumping and kicking and doing all this other stuff and and Charlie’s Full Throttle was a little too full throttle. I believe then of course you go to the 2011 tv show which was horrific. They changed everybody, all the actors, all the angels were pretty much all criminals. It really reminded me of what Leonard Goldberg wanted to do originally with Charlie’s Angels was called the Alley Cats. It was like they’re all criminals and they were all like dark and leather and doing good but that all went wrong on the series. It only lasted eight episodes and then of course we can look at the Elizabeth Banks movie which just completely missed the boat. The movie made no money.
Why was that film such a misfire?
I think a lot of was there was like 14 Bosleys and it got all jumbled. What got me was he opening scene and there’s all these people doing karate fighting and then they just focus on the three Angels and I’m like who are these other people? And there’s like a variety of Angels everywhere and I’m like what is going on? And the characters are not even in a trio until the end of the movie. They’re fighting, they’re inciting, they’re kicking each other off the roof. The writing was horrific. There was so much, so many bad things about that movie.
How did you go from being a mere fan to being the pre-eminent Angels historian and curator?
Honestly way back in the 90s I started collecting Charlie’s memorabilia. I was a collector when I was a kid, I didn’t know what collecting was, I just collected everything. And some of that stuff was made to throw away, and some I lost. And then I went to a party here in los angeles and they had the charlie’s angels dolls and this was in 1996. It was probably even earlier than that, ‘94. And I was like “I want those,” and then I just started collecting stuff. And that’s when you would go to the toy shop. There was no internet. There was no ebay. So you got this thing called the phone book and you circle things, you call people on the phone in ohio and say “hey can I buy this” and send them a check and it was really a hunt of collecting.
How was it publishing a newsletter and running a fan website in the earliest days of the internet?
Charliesangels.com came as the cusp of the internet and it had just started but yeah with collecting, it was definitely the hunt, the trying to figure out things and calling people. People would get the toy shop to FedEx to them before it gets to anybody else. People were, like obsessed, I mean it was just like “I’m gonna get that Charlie’s Angels doll before you are” or the makeup sets or that Farrah Fawcett mug. It was a crazy time but with that I was like “okay well I want to know what’s happening with the Angels.” I want to know what’s happening with the actresses, things were still happening, they’re all working still and I was like what’s happening with them? Because there was no place to go to find out where things were and so I had found a kind of group of Charlie’s Angels fans and I was “so is there a newsletter or something I can subscribe to that I can find out what’s going on?” and they’re like no and I was like “well then I think maybe I should do that.” so that’s what I did, I sat down in 1995 and I wrote my first newsletter. It was a one page newsletter that went out. And then it became four pages, the four pages became a fanzine, and people around the world were cutting me twelve dollars for the stamps. The first ones were free and then I got into a fanzine. A bookstore which is no longer here in West Hollywood used to have it on their newsstand. Some of the Hollywood collectible places up in Hollywood had it and I just started sending it out. I mean it happened every month and we would find all the information, I let all the publishers know that I was doing it and publicists would write me and send me stuff in an email or and I would start getting boxes from lifetime movies and stuff like that. So whatever anybody was doing they were just sending it to me. And then ‘96 the website began and that just turned huge as soon pretty much like three months after we were on online. Yahoo picked us as the site of the day, and it blew the site off the website and media started calling me all the time. I was in all the newspapers and stuff, and it was crazy. It never stopped, it just kept going.
Was there a point where it just became overwhelming running the site and the newsletter?
I don’t think I ever felt like it was too big to handle. When yahoo.com turns into the site of the day, that was pretty amazing, because it blew me off my server and I had to deal with the server. we were down for like a day and a half, and we struck a deal that if they would put an ad up, I could get a bigger space on their servers. This is before even godaddy was around, this was a long time ago. And then the the biggest thing for me at that point was the media started coming knocking on my door and so I started doing interviews and newspapers. Then meeting Cheryl for the first time. She was the first Angel I met. And then getting to know all the actresses was even beyond my wildest dreams. Oh my God!
Were the Angels already aware of who you were when you met them?
Yes, because their agents had received the newsletter. Most of them had heard of me and seen me. There was another show I was on that they wanted my collectibles on and Jacqueline was there so I faded into their lives whether they wanted to or not. I’ve done PR for Tanya Roberts, I did websites for both Cheryl and Tanya and Farrah Fawcett. I was Farrah’s assistant for two years. I am dear friends with of course Johnny, who’s passed away, and Cheryl, and well of course I know Kate very well and and I know Jackson very well and yeah I always say I’m the luckiest man on the earth because I get to hang with angels.
What is Charlie’s Angels’ connection with West Hollywood?
Well first off, a couple things with me: I mean with Charlie’s Angels, the newsletter, and the website, I have been here in West Hollywood forever. I’ve been a West Hollywood resident for about 30 years and we published the newsletter at Charlie Chan’s when that was around, so that it was a locally published newsletter or fanzine here in West Hollywood, and of course the website’s still here because that’s where I live so I’m always working on it through here. As far as the fandom as in the gay culture, we love beautiful women and the gay culture is always fascinated with gorgeous and beautiful women, and Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe and all these iconic actors and actresses. And I think that a beautiful, butt-kicking strong woman is definitely what we are drawn to. I always say I never wanted to date them but I wanted to shop with them. And I have, by the way. With Tanya, we’ve gone to Macy’s in the Valley, we did a lot of Christmas shopping. Cheryl, Bloomingdale’s, I believe. And then of course Farrah, we hit all the Beverly Hills shops. I remember Cheryl took me out for lunch in the Valley for my birthday and it was just interesting because it was one of those places you go up and you get food at the counter and so we ordered and she paid and we’re just standing there chatting. As I’m looking around everyone — like I mean the whole place — everyone’s talking about her. No one came up to her or bothered her because it was over by Warner Bros. and everybody was in the business but everybody was chatting about her. I mean the same thing happened every time we went out. When I went out with Farrah, when we would go places — Jay Bernstein told me once “When Farrah arrives someplace, everybody wants to meet her, from the queen of whatever to the bus boy.” And that’s the same for all the Angels. Everybody remembers Charlie’s Angels and they love it and they all have their favorite Angel.
What does the future hold for the franchise?
Hopefully another movie but I don’t think that’s in the future as far as with the last film, but who knows, never say never. I just wish when they do a movie or a TV show they actually call me or somebody else from the original series to help them. I’m happy to come in and help because you need to remember the bible of where it comes from. You can change things but if you look at all the TV shows that have been remade, the ones who really kept with the bible of the series, the original have gone on, like Hawaii 5-0 is a good example. They did it very well. But when they brought out the Bionic Woman, it’s dark and shadowy, and I’m like, “That’s not what it’s about.” I mean if you’re going to do something like that, call it something else. Because people want nostalgia and they want to watch what they remember in some way. If you don’t keep with the bible it’s hard.
Tell us about the anniversary.
Charlie’s Angels turns 45 years old. This is celebrating the 45th anniversary this month. so I am doing a live chat with Cheryl Ladd on Sept. 21, on the 45th anniversary through charlieangells.com. We just announced that today, so we’re going to do a live chat talking about Charlie’s Angels, and I think we’re going to set one up with Jacqueline but that has not been finished yet. And the new book is out about the history of what I did and how it is, and it has all the old newsletters in it so people can look at the original newsletters and people have been really responding to it. People have really enjoyed seeing the background of the newsletter and the website just because I think it’s been so culturally significant. It’s just fun to look back and celebrate something that’s been going so long and is so ingrained in my world. I never never thought I’d be talking about Charlie’s Angels for this long.